College football notes

By From Staff and Wire Reports

FLORIDA STATE:

Wide receiver Ron Dugans will miss the Seminoles' season opener against Louisiana Tech because of a broken finger. Dugans, a senior from Tallahassee, underwent surgery Thursday to have a pin inserted to stabilize the fractured left ring finger.

Dugans caught 38 passes for 616 yards and three touchdowns last year. He was expected to start opposite Peter Warrick.

Florida State also will be without promising redshirt freshman cornerback Stanford Samuels, who had reconstructive knee surgery after suffering a torn ACL. He will miss the season, the team said.

The Seminoles began full practices Saturday. They open the season Aug. 28.

END OF ERA:

Tennessee and Kentucky have discontinued using a beer barrel as the trophy for their football rivalry.

The decision to end the 74-year-old tradition came less than a year after a fatal alcohol-related truck crash involving two Kentucky football players.

Kentucky athletic director C.M. Newton said Friday that he and Tennessee athletic director Doug Dickey made the decision to stop the practice. Officials would not elaborate.

The blue, white and orange-painted keg has traditionally gone to the winner of each year's Tennessee-Kentucky football game.

But last November, the annual post-game display was canceled out of respect for the victims of the crash one week earlier that killed Kentucky transfer player Arthur Steinmetz and Eastern Kentucky student Scott Brock, the best friend of then-Kentucky star quarterback Tim Couch.

Tests showed that Kentucky football player Jason Watts, the driver and sole survivor of the wreck, had a blood-alcohol content 1 1/2 times the legal limit following the Nov. 15 crash. He pleaded guilty to two counts of reckless homicide and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Watts served less than four months before a judge sentenced him to five years probation and community service.